The commander of the Akhmat battalion and the chief ideologist at the Russian Defense Ministry, Apty Alaudinov, released a book titled The Army of Jesus (Isa, peace be upon Him) in the battle against the army of the Dajjal-Antichrist, arguing that Islam and Orthodoxy can unite only on the basis of war against Satan and in defense of shared family values.
Putin’s general was supported by Patriarch Kirill Gundyayev, although theologians of the Russian Orthodox Church consider Alaudinov’s ideas heretical.
This is reported in an article by Novaya Gazeta. Europe.
A Hero of Russia, commander of the Akhmat unit, and deputy head of the Main Military Political Directorate of the Russian Defense Ministry, General Apty Alaudinov presented the book as a meaning forming manifesto of nationwide scope that answers the questions “Why are we all together, and what are we fighting for?” It is important to recall that Muslim Chechens make up a quarter of Akhmat’s servicemen, while at least half of its personnel are ethnic Russians.
At first glance, Alaudinov and his co author, an imam, propose believing in God in an abstract way, without dogma and without clear answers to questions about the nature of Jesus Christ, the Trinity, the contradictions between the Gospel and the Quran, or the key disagreements even in those same “family values.”
If read literally, the book, alongside praise for the Orthodox, also classifies them as Satanists.
At the same time, Alaudinov and Khiytanayev emphasize the “threat of the West.”
“In NATO countries, in the West, subhumans are appearing who burn the Holy Scriptures, encroach on the feelings of believers, defame the names of the Prophets, make various vile films, call the Prophets and Messengers liars, draw vile caricatures of them, distort the truth, turn people into slaves of the devil, follow the path of Satan, and commit evil,” the book states.
By offering the Russian army their syncretic religion as an ideological foundation, one that turns a blind eye to questions of dogma, Alaudinov and Khiytanayev focus on “methodology.” Put bluntly, it does not matter which God you believe in, what matters is the methods by which you destroy His enemies, the people of the West. The methods the book proposes are purely jihadist, “the destruction of Satanists and the Kyiv junta.”
A reaction soon followed. Deputy chairman of the Synodal Missionary Department of the Russian Orthodox Church, Priest Sergiy Fufayev, criticized the Alaudinov Khiytanayev book as heretical.
His deputy was supported by the chairman of the Synodal Missionary Department, Archbishop Savva Tutunov, who called Alaudinov’s ideology “unacceptable” and “in contradiction with Orthodoxy.”
But the Moscow Patriarch Kirill supported the Muslim authors, saying, “Churches in the West are being repurposed, and it is best of all if they are turned into mosques. Why? At least in mosques they pray to God.”
Earlier, Kirill had already expressed support for Alaudinov and his understanding of Islam. He made it clear that during the “special military operation,” when the entire people have rallied around the “national leader,” theology and dogma are of no importance, and “only a madman or a person with evil intentions could provoke an Orthodox Islamic conflict.” Kirill allows that there may be some differences between Orthodoxy and Islam somewhere, but this is not the main thing. The main thing is “concern for the motherland, for Russia,” which, in fact, becomes the true deity for both the patriarch himself and all believing apologists of the war.
